Wife of India minister found dead after Twitter spat

Jan. 18, 2014
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Sunanda Puskhar Tharoor, right, wife of India's Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, poses with her husband at the Indian F1 Grand Prix outside New Delhi, October 27, 2013. Sunanda, 52, was found dead in a New Delhi hotel room Friday, police said, days after she was involved in a row with a Pakistani woman on Twitter. / INDIA REUTERS

by William M. Welch, USA TODAY

by William M. Welch, USA TODAY

The wife of an Indian minister was found dead in a New Delhi hotel room, days after she engaged in a Twitter dispute with a Pakistani journalist she accused of stalking her husband.

A police spokesman, Rajan Bhagat, said the cause of Sunanda Pushkar's death Friday was under investigation. The Press Trust of India news agency reported the cause was believed to be suicide. Police declined comment, the Associated Press reported.

Pushkar. 52, and her husband, junior Human Resources Development Minister Shashi Tharoor, had found themselves on the front pages of Indian newspapers and in social media after she allegedly tweeted Thursday that her husband was having an affair with the Pakistani woman, Mehr Tarar. The tweets also accused the journalist of being a spy.

Abhinav Kumar, a minister's aide, said that Tharoor and his wife had moved into the five-star hotel Thursday while their home was being painted. The minister first thought his wife was sleeping when he returned to their suite Friday night after a meeting, but she was found dead, he said.

Pushkar on Thursday gave a series of rambling interviews to Indian TV stations in which she said did not plan to leave her husband.

The Pakistani journalist, in interviews with Indian TV stations on Thursday, denied she was having an affair with Tharoor. She said she had met him in the past for interviews.

Tharoor was U.N. undersecretary-general for communications and public information under former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His name was among those considered for the top U.N. post in 2006, when Ban Ki Moon was selected.

On Saturday, a hospital official called the death unnatural.

"The postmortem has been completed, we have sent samples for toxicology analysis to rule out poisoning," Sudhir Gupta, head of the autopsy board at the hospital, told CNN.

"This is a preliminary report but we can say that it is a case of unnatural sudden death. There were certain injuries on her body but we can't reveal details at the moment."

A final report will be concluded in a few days, Gupta said.

Pushkar had said she had gone into her husband's Twitter account and put out private messages that she alleged Tarar had sent to her husband over BlackBerry Messenger, Reuters reported.